Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Business and Heart

The Morning Show is a blog companion to the podcast audio


  Hey there, and welcome to the Signalman show!  Well, today was the day.  I gathered the tarps, packed up the final odds 'n ends, chased all the guitar picks down, looked out the window one last time, and dropped the keys to my office off in the deposit box.  I drove north, and turned off Old Washington Road for good.  

  I've recently moved my guitar teaching practice to my home studio, closing out 13 years in Waldorf, MD.  It's taught me a lot about running a business, and, the thought of the day - business and heart need not be unrelated.  We usually think "professional" means dressing boring and never having a long knife too far away.  "It's nothing personal, it's just business."  I've acted like that at times, and been on the receiving end of it as well.  And sometimes we all carry it farther, making the business actions personal in a bad way.  That's a doozy of a bad hop to field, and often counterproductive in addition to being mean.  But today, there was one final affirmation of a good business lesson from Old Washington Road.  My room was painted.  There was another renter lined up.  All the business was taken care of.  I had said thank you and goodbye, and started to walk down the hall. My kind landlady called out that she was going to miss me.  This small gesture of friendship and appreciation was a fitting final lesson that we can make the bucks, run empires...and to quote Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol...make mankind our business.  

Thank you, Waldorf!  And thank you, A.  

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